Sweepers and many scrubbers for cleaning building floors and paved outdoor areas have horizontally mounted cylindrical brushes that rotate against the surface to be cleaned. Such contact between brush and surface eventually wears out the brush, so from time to time it must be removed from the machine and replaced with a new or rebuilt brush. Brushes are also removed at times for inspection or to reverse them to assure even wear. These service operations occur often enough that a machine operator can save substantial amounts of time if such machines are designed so he can quickly and easily remove and replace brushes.
This need has long been recognized and various efforts have been made in this direction. One example is found in U.S. Pat. No. 3,892,003. It shows a small sweeper with a brush rotatably mounted between two brush arms attached to a torsionally stiff transverse member. One arm is flexible enough so that finger pressure on it will spring it away from the brush, thereby permitting the brush to be removed. This construction is suitable for a small sweeper where a brush arm that is light enough to be sprung by hand is strong enough for the intended service. For larger sweepers and scrubbers, however, such as riding-type industrial machines, much heavier duty brush arms are required, and of course these cannot be flexed by finger pressure.
On these heavier machines some form of a bolted connection is generally provided between a torsionally stiff transverse member and one brush arm. A brush can be removed after the one brush arm is unbolted from the transverse member and, of course, replacing the brush involves bolting the connection back together again. The best of these designs permit making a brush change in about five minutes once the job is begun. However, it requires the use of a wrench, which may not be available where the sweeper is. Also, in some union shops, a service operation on a machine may be done by the operator of the machine if no tools are used, but if tools are required the work must be done by a maintenance person. Sometimes there are delays in scheduling such work. So there is a long-felt need for a quick, no-tool method that a machine operator can easily use for changing brushes, at least in the larger sizes of industrial sweepers and scrubbers.